Doctorow, whose career spans 50 years and whose acclaimed novels include Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and World's Fair, said that winning the award would help to – momentarily – soothe his "self-doubt".

"I was a child who read everything I could get my hands on. Eventually, I asked of a story not only what was to happen next, but how is this done? How am I made to live from words on a page? And so I became a writer myself," said the author. "But is there a novelist who doesn't live with self-doubt? The high honour of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction confers a blessed moment of peace and resolution."

Established to mark the career of an American writer whose work "is distinguished not only for its mastery of the art but for its originality of thought and imagination", the prize has previously gone to Don DeLillo, and in its previous format as the Library of Congress Creative Achievement award for fiction to John Grisham, Isabel Allende, Toni Morrison and Philip Roth.

Announcing that the judging panel of authors and critics had decided on Doctorow as this year's winner, librarian of congress James Billington described the author as "our very own Charles Dickens, summoning a distinctly American place and time, channelling our myriad voices".

"Each book is a vivid canvas, filled with colour and drama. In each, he chronicles an entirely different world," said Billington.

Doctorow told the New York Times that his focus on American history was "not a conscious decision, but somewhere along the line I must have realised a slice of time was as valid an organising principle for a novel as a bit of acreage".

"The great Faulkner might have Yoknapatawpha County but I could have the first decade of the 20th century," he said, referring to Ragtime.

The prize, which specifically seeks to reward "strong, unique, enduring voices that – throughout long, consistently accomplished careers – have told us something about the American experience", will be given to Doctorow on 30 August at the Library of Congress National Book festival.

Doctorow's prize will join his previous awards, including the National Book Award for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner award.